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{These Christmas Lights}
She thinks it's a bad idea on the first ring. She almost hangs up—it's not like she has any business drunk-calling Gilbert, but it's not like she has any business sitting around in a wrinkled evening gown either. She has half a glass of whiskey—she's past the point of assessing how good it is, but it's probably expensive, it's all expensive—and she's sitting there at the self-service bar of their goddamn penthouse, and she has mascara smeared all over her wrist from trying to rub it off. Roderich can make up for his faults in their collection of fine, imported alcohol, she supposes. She digs into it often enough, more often now than she used to. More often now.

There's a click from the earpiece, a bit of fumbling, and then she's greeted with a slightly slurred, "Erzsi?" So he's been drinking too. Hopefully to a more cheerful occasion than she is.

"Hey," she says. It's quiet and subdued, so she says it again louder, "Hey. Sorry, I hope I'm not calling at a bad time." The hesitation isn't characteristic of her, so it's probably no surprise that Gilbert sounds concerned—or at least, as concerned he can sound given the circumstances of electronic communication and inebriation.

"Yeah—I mean—no, no, it's totally fine," he says. She can hear shuffling in the background, a few hushed words, as though he is excusing himself and shifting around—moving into another room or the hallway perhaps, for a more private conversation. "What's up?"

"I just—" she begins, then she cuts herself off and instead says, "God, this is stupid." She breathes in deep and runs her hand over her eyes again (that fucking mascara itches like hell). "Nevermind, I probably shouldn't be calling right now anyway. It's... It's nothing you haven't heard before." The way she says it sounds like defeat. Not being able to handle this on her own, not being able to be her own hero—those were always her vices. And it's only worse because this isn't the first time she's called Gilbert about this, half-drunk and ranting. It's a losing battle, and a pitiful one at that.

"Hey, hey, it's fine," comes his reassurances. He's earnest (always earnest), and his voice holds nothing but truth. She wants to believe him, because she can rely on him in a way she can't rely on Roderich, and as though reading her thoughts Gilbert says, "It's about Roderich, isn't it?"

She sighs, a burst of static. "Yeah. We fought." Again.

The silence stretches on, both of them holding the knowledge that Erzsébet's and Roderich's fights are nothing new. "What happened?" he finally asks—gently, like he's working a pin into the lock of the chamber of her heart, coaxing her to spill out all of those secrets she keeps tightly raveled up in her chest. And goddammit—she knows she falls for it every single time, for his tone of 'please, I want to help you,' and 'please, I really do care,' but it's so good to know when she doesn't even know from Roderich anymore.

"It was one of his parties again," she says. "Wall Street. And you know I hate those things, but I can do it because it's for him. He just can't compromise—or maybe he's too good at compromise, I don't know!" She falls silent, struggling to gather her thoughts. "I just-I know I'm not supposed to be there. I know I'm not part of their world but I damn well try to be, because he needs me there. But it's always about his business partners, his classist, misogynistic, whatever friends who need me to kiss their asses all the fucking time, and I'm not going to do that, not when they're talking about me like I'm a fucking whore.

"Those girls don't deserve the way they talked about them, like-like they're disposable. I don't deserve the way they talk about me, about our relationship. And I know Roderich doesn't like it either, I know it hurts him but—" The words, once they've begun, flow like a river. These aren't things Gilbert's never heard before; they're things in a long list that he's heard and she feels pathetic for it. She wants to be able to fix it on her own like she's always done, but the alcohol is burning her throat and there's a tremor in her fingers, and it feels like she has the entire world waiting to spill out from her lips. "He compromises. He just can't tell them to stop. But I can—I walked out. He told me to behave myself later, probably once he finally could bring himself to tear away from those asshole business partners of his."

She sighs and runs her free hand through her hair. "And that's that. We yelled at each other, and I came home." She'd come home and poured herself a glass of whiskey, several glasses of whiskey, and since then she'd felt numb to the situation. Or maybe she was feeling too many things to express, but either way, the words had withered and died on her tongue. More than talking any more, she wants to have her fist connect with a good, solid punch to someone's face, preferably the asshole she was referring to.

"He always pulls this," says Gilbert after a moment, and, yeah, she knows precisely the exasperation reflected in his voice. "Haven't you told him how horrible he is as a judge of character, or does he just not listen?"

"I don't know," she says. "I don't know; I keep telling him to find other people, to pull a few of his own punches, but he doesn't, he doesn't. There's always the next event and the next business partner and the next time when he looks at me like he's so fucking disappointed in me and we'll go home and there'll always be this or that: 'oh, Erzsi, why didn't you put your hair up the way I told you to?' and 'oh, Erzsi, why can't you just not make a scene for once?' and it's because your friend is a fucking misogynistic douchebag, that's why!" She almost slams her phone down on the table, but she ends up slamming her empty glass instead, the shrill sound of the impact ringing like bells in the dead silence. It peters out into the emptiness of the house, and for a moment all she can hear is the static across the line and her own deep breaths.

"Hey, he's a prick, all right?" says Gilbert after a moment, his voice crackling through the phone. "We've said before that he's too much of a pansy to say anything his—whatever—corporate tycoon and corrupt politician friends don't agree with."

She opens her mouth to say something, but she doesn't know what. Part of her instinctually wants to defend him, and the other wants to tell Gilbert that he's right, that she should've seen this coming, that she should've ended it the first time Roderich told her her dress wasn't "suitable" enough and shacked her up with some seamstress for a fitted hundred-dollar ridiculousness of an evening gown . She'd dressed in all the satin and lace and diamonds for him, worn a second skin like she was born in it, put up with his asshole friends and he still liked to tell her that going for a drink with her coworkers should be beneath her, because the alcohol was bad, the venue was disreputable, or the company she kept in her free time left something to be desired.

"It's more like a job than a marriage," she says quietly.

Gilbert's cackle sounds broken up and foreign with static, but it's the most comforting thing she's heard tonight. "He was always a chore, Erzsi. 'It was terribly nice of you to have me for dinner, Mr. Beilschmidt, but this chicken is too dry for my taste.' 'Eek, Gilbert, get that spider away from me, but don't you dare use my Mozart scorebook!'" He pitches his voice high with something that sounds like a damnably bad British accent, and Erzsébet can't help it.

She laughs. There are the edges of a sob to it, frail around the corners, but it's a relief to laugh after spending a day feeling like she was going to fall apart.

"Hey, listen," Gilbert says when her shaky giggles subside. "How about you get out of that house for awhile? The little lordling won't be back yet, and it... well, you shouldn't spend Christmas eve like this." There's a slight pause, like a hitch in his breath, but she knows him well enough to know that he's trying to force his next words from his tongue. "So how about spending it with me? Get a pack of cheap beers, hole up at fucking Holiday Inn or whatever, chat and get drunk like we used to?" He ends his question in a hesitant, hopeful pitch, and she thinks he must be an idiot for thinking he even needed to hope.

"Yeah," she says, and she knows that he can't see her but maybe he can hear the smile in her voice. "Yeah, I'd love that. But I have a better idea." His curiousity can be felt over the line, but it just makes her smile wider. It's been awhile since she'd been a co-conspirator in their little plots and schemes, and god, she'd missed it. "How about you give me an hour to tidy myself up and make it to Greenwich Hotel with my dear husband's credit card, and then we order the five most expensive wines they've got on their list and pass out happily drunk 'til morning?"

He laughs again, sharp and loud. "Now that's more like it," he says, and she just knows the smirk that is on his face now. She wants to see it. "We'll make him pay good, literally." He snickers at his own joke, but when it dies down and he continues on, his voice is softer, more serious. "And look—when it's morning again and everything is saner, I'm taking you back there and we're going to remind him who chased off his schoolyard bullies, okay? You gotta set things straight with him, Erzsi, and I'll be your goddamn marriage counselor if I have to."

She nods, and maybe she'll argue with him about it later, maybe she'll have second thoughts about dragging her best friend into her marriage spat, but it sounds like the best plan in the world right now so she just nods and says, "Yeah. Yeah, okay." She wants to tell him that if it wasn't him, it would've been you, the words balanced there on the tip of her drunken tongue, but she knows that's not what either of them need to have out in the open, not now, so instead she says, "I'll see you soon, Gilbert. And thanks. Really."